Charge for building rights: a puzzle to be solved

Abstract

This paper proposes a methodology to assess the degree of understanding of the urban planning tool "charge for building rights" (CBR / outorga onerosa do direito de construir) by municipal governments in Brazil, based on the analysis of their master plans. The CBR is an urban planning tool which was nationally regulated by the City Statute in 2001 and included in a large number of master plans developed thereafter. Its conception is quite complex and its application depends on a distinguished technical capacity. Hence, the way the CBR is presented in the master plan text provides clues about how that administration intends (or not) to implement the instrument in its territory. It is inferred that the tool just cited or poorly specified in that regulation will probably not be used, or its applicability will be endangered. The proposed methodology involves the analysis of legal texts based on six groups of criteria. Specific questions were developed for each group, the answers were valued (1 or 0), and the numbers obtained were processed in a specific way for each criteria grouping. The combination of scores obtained per group provides an index per city. This index ranges from zero to one: the closer to one, the more detailed the instrument, and the more capable the municipality is to apply it, and vice versa. This methodology was applied to 159 master plans of municipalities in the State of São Paulo. The results show that, in general, the cities do not have a full understanding of this new urban planning tool. In other words, the instrument remains an enigma to be unraveled for a large portion of municipal administrations.